Manipulating Oriental melodies and rhythms with digital software seems in vogue - once again. This is what this collection of grime, dub-, breakcore-, hip-hop-, noise-, new-wave-dabké- and mahragan-tracks seems to suggest. Is this yet another Orientalist Trap? Or do many of these tracks go beyond Electro-Arab-Tracks of the late 1990s and early 2000s? Send us your comments via Twitter or Facebook - and suggest more contemporary Oriental-Trap for our playlist!
Musicians about their Tracks
«’Douga Douga’ represent an imaginary landscape, a Saharan dream let’s say. I tried to build that with the rhythmic structure and Mauritanian vocal samples.» (El Mahdy Jr., Turkey, 2014)
«’Theme’ was our very first track, and it was exactly as we dreamed: dark, cold, techno and oriental, without the use of a big sample.» (Acid Arab, France, 2014)
«You picked one of my favourite songs: Egyptronica in it’s true bold & original form.» (Machine Eat Man, Egypt, 2014)
«Most important in the track “sho hal meshkleh” is respect. U have to respect humans in most cases, and u have to stay humble no matter what, but … there’s always exceptions to any rule.» (Edd Abbas, Lebanon, 2014)
Some of the Tracks
The Arab World on Norient
Check out many articles, podcasts and video-clips in our Dossier: Arab World on Norient.com. And read about Orientalism here. Check also the following two books about Beirut and the Arab World: «The Arab Avant-Garde – Music, Politics, Modernity» and «Local Music Scenes and Globalization – Transnational Platforms in Beirut». Norient further released the audio collage and radio feature «Sonic Traces: From the Arab World»:
